The Importance of Youth Ministry

Student: “Go to church, Jesus, God, read your bible, pray?”
Me: “Those are all great answers, but the question was do you know what Noah did?”

Anybody who has ever taught Sunday school has heard these answers even when the kid wasn’t paying attention, probably because half the time one of those is the right answer. There is so much depth behind those answers I am just glad the kids know them, but today I wanted to dive into the part about church.

Youth ministry at its best fulfills many important functions of church. Church is so much more than just coming to a service or youth group, but it is being deeply involved in a Christ centered global community. I love the illustration in I Corinthians 12 of being the body of Christ and how each member was created differently to serve its function. When Christ was here he brought healing to people, he loved people, he helped people, he invited people in, he taught, and he gave himself up for others. We are called to continue this work as a community. Can you imagine the incredible things that would happen if every church in the area combined all of our talents, skills, and resources together to be the continued work of Christ to Virginia Beach? Youth ministry leaders want students to understand that they are a part of something so much bigger than themselves at an early age. These are some of the most formative years of their lives and forming them around Jesus will give them a solid foundation to be truly successful in life. The incredible thing about a Christ centered community is the threshold to get in is not how cool you are or good at a sport you are, but that you trust in Jesus. God created us each different in terms of the gifts we have, the culture we come from, and the things we are excited about so that we are stronger unified with our differences than if everyone was the same. How awesome would that be if in middle and high school students appreciated each other’s differences instead of making them feel like outcasts because of them?

In short youth ministry is important because God created humans especially teenagers to need community and they will find it somewhere. Youth ministry are communities that weekly point teenagers to Jesus, seeing peers living out their faith, and being the body of Christ by serving and loving others for who they are. To me that sounds way better than what the communities at school are pointing our students to do. We would love for you to join us at Galilee.